(NYT) – For an audience that grew to more than a million followers, she challenged assumptions about how people with serious illnesses should look and live.

Sydney Towle, a social media memoirist who mixed anguish, optimism and unabashed wanderlust as she challenged TikTok viewers to reconsider how a cancer patient should look and live, died on Wednesday at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. She was 26.

Her death, from complications of metastatic bile duct cancer, was announced on her social media channels. Earlier this week, her family said that she had entered hospice care. (Read More)